Joyful Public Speaking (from fear to joy)

Two decades ago I had my employer buy a Macroscope 25 from RF Interscience Company. That’s a very useful 25X portable microscope for looking at small objects like weld imperfections, paint problems, documents, or insects. It’s just nine inches tall, and the eyepiece has a 5-mm reticle for measuring things. They sell a penlight holder for lighting the area you’re looking at. There also is a camera adapter that screws on threads under the rubber eyepiece cup so you can take pictures of what you see. 
























Better yet,  you also can remove the  the top part and use it as an 8X monocular for watching birds. I missed having a Macroscope 25. 

Last month on eBay I say a couple of used Macroscopes for sale. I got outbid on the first one, but won the second one on a Friday evening for less than $25 including shipping. (Right now a new one is $140). When it arrived I was disappointed to find that the knurled ring on the eyepiece didn’t move properly, so I couldn’t focus to see the image or reticle clearly.

I called up RF Interscience, and they said to send it in for service. Then they would look at it and tell me if it could be fixed. So, I sent it off via USPS Priority Mail on August 1st.

Monday morning  I realized that I hadn’t heard back from them, and I was considering calling to check where it was. That afternoon a UPS package arrived containing the repaired Macroscope. They had cleaned the lenses, and tightened the loose setscrews on the eyepiece. There was no charge, and they had sent it back on August 3rd, the very same day they got it. That’s great service! 

All the delay just was from shipping it back via UPS Ground. The invoice also said that this was a first edition Macroscope 25 made for them in Japan. Small specks in the image resulted from aging of the cement used to bond the reticle to the window. If that bothered me, they could replace the reticle assembly.    

This early Macroscope doesn’t have threads on the eyepiece for a camera adapter. Otherwise it was a great buy at eBay, the garage sale for the world. 

Suppose that you were going to speak at the evening opening session of a conference. You planned ahead, got there the day before, and rehearsed your speech repeatedly. But, when you went to give it you noticed a whole bunch of frowning faces in the audience. Were they upset because your content and delivery were terrible? Perhaps not.

Back in 1975 I attended an international technical conference that was held at a lovely resort location - Jackson Lake Lodge, in Grand Teton National Park. To get there you probably had to fly to Jackson, Wyoming via Frontier Airlines, whose nearest hub airports were in Denver and Salt Lake City. Back then they flew Convair 580 turboprop airliners that only held fifty people.

The conference had been organized by a pair of university professors. They’d warned Frontier not to overbook flights to Jackson by their usual percentages on the day and evening when the conference opened. Of course Frontier ignored them, and everybody with reservations showed up at the counters in their two hubs. Some people had to take later flights. Others missed the opening session.

At the conference one disgruntled traveler told me he’d had to take a later flight. John worked in market development for a huge international metals company. The person behind the counter also told him that his baggage might not fly with him, and might not even arrive until the next morning. When he asked if the airline could be more specific, the counter person just snidely replied:

“That’s what we call Frontier roulette!”

John spent most of his work week traveling around the U.S. visiting customers. I wonder how many business travelers he told that customer disservice punch line, and how many million dollars of lost business it eventually cost Frontier, who went bankrupt in 1986.  
    
The roulette cartoon came from an old Puck magazine. This post was inspired by Lisa Braithwaite’s Speak Schmeak blog post yesterday on why I’m my own worst audience member.

Watch Mark Sanborn discuss How to provide extraordinary service: The Fred Factor, and How to Lead without a Title: Creating Leaders at Every Level. Mark was the 2003-2004 president of the National Speakers Association. These videos discuss ideas described in more detail in his concise books The Fred Factor and You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader.

In television comedies employees of the US Postal Service like Cliff Clavin on Cheers and Newman on Seinfeld are portrayed as incompetent or malevolent. Fred is a great counterexample. Mark tells great stories, with amusing details like at 5:15 in the second video when he comments that:

“I like USA Today. It’s the adult coloring book of newspapers.”

Mark has both a web site and a leadership blog.

I’ve had fun dredging through YouTube for these examples of five excellent public speakers amid acres of drivel.

Watch Phillip Van Hooser discuss Exceptional Customer Service Strategies from Willie’s Way and The Fear of Failure. Although the video quality is marginal, his storytelling shines through.

He wrote a long article about How to Manage Fear, Embrace Change & Lead Employees in an Uncertain Economy. Willie’s Way was a book and you can read an excerpt. Mr. Van Hooser has a website and a blog. He was president of the National Speakers Association in 2009-2010. Ian Griffin interviewed him then.

How a speech gets written will differ depending on the intended audience. Last month I found a pair of cartoons with very different approaches to the same topic. Both talked about navigating the customer service maze, but otherwise they were wildly different.

One cartoon was in Dave Kellett’s Sheldon: It’s Time to Play the Customer Service Call Center Game. The other was in Matthew Inman’s Oatmeal: Why I’d Rather Be Punched in the Testicles than Call Customer Service.

Dave’s cartoon is light hearted and brief. If it were a movie, it would have a G (General audiences, all ages) rating. Matthew’s is serious and lengthy; he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. If it were a movie, it would have an R (Restricted, children under 17 must be accompanied by a parent) rating. Perhaps some of the difference in attitude is that Dave lives in sunny Los Angeles, while Matthew lives in gray, rainy Seattle.

Another difference between Dave’s and Matthew’s cartoons is that Dave just takes you around a circle, but Matthew eventually gets his problem resolved. He has to put up with a lot of crap first though, like being asked:

“...Can I get your
first name
phone number
address
date of birth
favorite planet in the solar system
and least favorite African mammal.
I won’t actually log this information,
mind you, so you’ll have to repeat it
to every other operator I forward you to.”

There’s another Oatmeal cartoon on How to Make Your Shopping Cart Suck Less.

The board image originally was titled Game of the District Messenger Boy.

Recently I read Ralph Heath’s 2009 book on Celebrating Failure. He opened chapter 23 by telling a story about investigating rental of a local meeting room.

First, the customer service representative in the corner ignored him. Second, when he said he’d like to book it from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM she replied that no one was there before 9:00 AM. Third, she added that they were closed on Mondays, although Ralph hadn’t even mentioned Monday. He found another venue, and then mused that a leader might have helped her to quit being completely negative (and win him as a customer).



































 

When I walk to the main public library, I cross the Boise River Greenbelt, which has paved trails on both sides of the river. As shown above, the sign on the south trail communicates that people should both enjoy themselves and behave responsibly. It says both what to do and what not to do. (There is a similar National Forest sign here).







































Less than a hundred feet away is the old Eighth Street Pedestrian Bridge. Look at the sign mounted on the left side at the south entrance, which says that six different activities all are prohibited. I’m still puzzling over how you could surf on a bridge with a wooden deck, and what was changed before adding the last two items.

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